State fails to probe 99.5% of Mex­ico mur­ders

OF THE more than 70 000 homi­cides reg­is­tered by Mex­i­can au­thor­i­ties since 2014, only 415 – or 0.5% – are be­ing in­ves­ti­gated, La Jor­nada re­ported.

Fig­ures by the At­tor­ney-Gen­eral’s Of­fice, or PGR, and sta­tis­tics of the Ex­ec­u­tive Sec­re­tar­iat of the Na­tional Pub­lic Se­cu­rity Sys­tem showed there have been 70 122 mur­ders in the coun­try in the pe­riod be­tween 2014 and the first five months of 2017.

The na­tional records of vic­tims of in­ten­tional homi­cide reg­is­tered 17 244 deaths in 2014, 18 673 for 2015 and 22 967 last year. Be­tween Jan­uary and May of 2017, 12 238 homi­cides were recorded. Dur­ing this pe­riod, the PGR has un­der­taken to in­ves­ti­gate 415 of these cases, in­clud­ing just six from 2017.

The an­nual Armed Con­flict Sur­vey by the In­ter­na­tional In­sti­tute for Strate­gic Stud­ies, IISS, showed the num­ber killed in 2016 due to the ex­pand­ing drug war in Mex­ico makes the coun­try among the most dan­ger­ous in the world.

In com­par­i­son, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan claimed 17 000 and 16 000 lives re­spec­tively in 2016.

The drug war be­gan in late 2006 when for­mer pres­i­dent Felipe Calderon un­leashed the mil­i­tary on the coun­try’s drug car­tels – a move im­me­di­ately backed by a US$1.8 bil­lion (23.7bn) mil­i­tary aid pack­age by for­mer US pres­i­dent Ge­orge W Bush. Wash­ing­ton sub­se­quently pro­vided fur­ther an­nual drug war aid to Mex­ico through the Merida Ini­tia­tive.

Pres­i­dent Peña Ni­eto has continued a drug war that has claimed a stag­ger­ing 125 000 vic­tims. The war has also seen on­go­ing dis­ap­pear­ances, tor­ture, rape and sys­tem­atic im­punity. teleSUR